Chapter Twenty-Three
Breaking the Code
If Elizabeth had seemed in low spirits yesterday after Darcy’s revelation that he had been partly, if inadvertently, to blame for Mr. Bingley’s decampment, it was now he who was distressed and out of sorts.
GOLDFINCH. Never would he have imagined that so innocuous a word would send him into such a fit of blue devils.
He sat at the desk, staring at that awful word, whilst his cousin spoke to Elizabeth in his most cheerful voice.
“As our friend Darcy here stares at the discs, allow me to explain my own presence.” He led Elizabeth to a comfortable chair by the window and then took the one beside it.
Darcy hardly noticed them, but Richard’s words penetrated his gloom.
“Shortly after your own visit to the artisan, I took it upon myself to visit with the good Mr. Mendel and explained myself and my position. The gentleman is so honest and true to his vow of secrecy that he denied any knowledge of this scheme, and quite convincingly at that, until Darcy expressly gave his permission to speak. For this, I respect the fellow more than ever. I have some intelligence that my cousin did not have, which I was able to supply to your friend, and I was able to lend him the assistance of two of our men with knowledge of a clockmaker’s craft to help him.
This is why the machine was ready so quickly.
“Along with the key I had given you earlier, our agent,” he paused at the word and Lizzy wondered what, precisely, he meant by its use, “had a portion of a coded message, the first part of which I have here today. I cannot risk the entirety of it falling into unfriendly hands, but if we can make sense of the first part, we will be able to learn the meaning of the rest.”
“Can I believe what I hear?” How deep did this whole mystery run?
Lizzy’s gasp of surprise echoed Darcy’s astonishment.
From his vantage point across the room, Darcy saw her face wrinkle in puzzlement, as her brow creased in the centre and her lips parted into a slight O.
Richard must have seen this as well, for he softened his voice, the friendly gentleman replacing the stern soldier once more.
“Your father has found himself in the midst of a matter of great importance to England, Miss Elizabeth, and with the successful conclusion of this matter, a great deal of trouble may be prevented. You may be proud of the service he has given his country, and of your own, for your insights and thoughts have been invaluable.”
“I fear I have done but little, sir.” She paused, then asked, “And what is your role in this affair?” Darcy knew she had been wondering this since almost the first time she met the colonel, but never before had it seemed prudent to ask.
“I am attached to a portion of the army that deals in discovering information that is of use to Britain and in destroying information that is to her detriment,” he replied with a smile.
“I am, to use the language of the clockmaker, merely a small cog in a large machine, but a useful one, I hope. I am afraid I may divulge no more.” He rose from his seat and stretched.
“I am in need of a pot of tea. Shall we venture to the kitchens? I believe my time in the fields has endowed me with enough skill to make a pot that will not poison you. Come along too, Darcy. You need not be the life of our little party but I cannot let you stew here alone.”
Richard led the way to the kitchen with the assurance of long practice and set about the task of preparing the tea.
As the water boiled on the modern cast-iron stove, he moved about the kitchen with accustomed ease.
He laid out a tray of biscuits and sliced fruit bread along with the tea and then set out three plates, before finally preparing the drink itself in a pretty silver teapot.
As he worked, he kept up a garrulous narrative, delaying Lizzy’s questions.
“Good,” he peered into the pot and took a deep sniff of the contents. “It smells brewed. May I be mother?” He chuckled and wielded the teapot with finesse, pouring a cup for each.
As they took their tea, Richard returned to matters inconsequential, from the weather to his sister’s thoughts on feeding ducks in the park, to whether it was preferable to be a proficient at drawing or playing music.
He was everything charming and his manner was calculated to please and soothe, and Elizabeth seemed to grow easier with her company as the colonel soothed her concerns and cheered her spirits.
Darcy sat in glum silence, not contributing to the discussion, nor even hearing much of it.
When he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective surface of the teapot, he nearly gasped.
His eyes were heavy and his face pale and drawn.
Elizabeth’s eyes moved to take in his appearance, and her face turned so sad and sympathetic that he felt his eyes begin to fill.
How very much did he long for her to take his hands in her own and assure him of her friendship.
.. no, of her affection. He had longed for it before, when he confessed the painful story of his sister’s near-elopement with Wickham, the blackguard; how much more did he ache for it now, when his faith had been destroyed anew.
“...examine the message.” A pause. “Darce? Are you listening?” The words filtered through his distraction, and he raised his heavy eyes to his cousin’s.
“Pardon, Richard. I was woolgathering.”
“So it seems,” Richard smirked. “I was suggesting to Miss Elizabeth that we try to apply what we have already learned to the communication I have procured. The exercise might help to distract you from whatever is pulling you into the depths. Drink your tea; I shall put on another kettle and we may sip whilst we work.”
Richard placed a piece of paper on the kitchen table. It had a series of letters written across it in an untidy but tutored hand—Richard’s own, Darcy noticed. He must have copied only a small portion of the message text for their efforts.
TOHLXMG C SG BLQHPR
“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Elizabeth chewed her bottom lip, and Darcy felt his eyes drawn to that spot and he fought the urge to reach across to her and pull her into his arms. Not now, not when you are out of sorts and needing comfort.
Later, when you are under better regulation and you can ask the lady her thoughts on the matter.
He pulled his eyes from her lip and sent them back to the nonsense on the paper.
“It is encrypted, Miss Elizabeth,” Richard teased. “If it made sense, our labours would not be needed.”
“Silly man!” she teased back. “Of course I knew that. I merely made a comment. Now, how is our word from the machine to relate to this string of letters?”
There was silence as all three contemplated the matter before them.
“The most obvious solution would be a Caesar cypher,” Richard offered. “It is a fairly simple cypher to break, but easy to encrypt and easy to translate back, if you know the offset.”
“Offset?” Elizabeth asked, but Darcy could see her mind working as surely as he had seen the workings of the mechanical horse he had purchased for her from Mr. Mendel.
She would find for herself the meaning quickly enough without help, such was her intelligence.
“Ah, I believe I have it. The offset is how far along the alphabet one need go in order to uncover the meaning. If the offset is B, then all As become Bs, all Bs become Cs, and so on.”
“Clever girl!” Richard beamed. Darcy sent him a scowl, but then turned his own smile upon the lady. She really was a clever young woman, with an understanding that transcended her middling education. She had determined in a moment what an offset cypher was, with little guidance.
“If we assume the first letter of ‘goldfinch’ to be the offset, then all As become Gs, and so forth. Let us see what it tells us.” Richard found a pencil in his pocket and began to scratch at the paper.
NIBFQGA V MA UFKBJL
“That cannot be correct.” She chewed at her lip again, and Darcy now wished to kiss it, lest she raise a welt or break the rosy surface of soft flesh.
“Neither did I expect it to be,” his cousin sighed. “That would be too simple, although with the encoded keyword, it was well worth the trying.
“Could it be one of the other letters?” Something was worrying at the back of Darcy’s mind, but it would not come to him. “Perhaps the offset is the O.”
Once more, Richard began working with his pencil.
FASXIYR N ER MXCSBD
“Nor that one,” Elizabeth sighed. “What if the offset is the letter L?”
IDVALBU Q HU PAFVEG
Darcy sighed. There was something he was missing. Something he had read once, long ago. He chased the thought, but it eluded him.
“Could it be a backwards cypher?” Richard asked, “One where A becomes Z and B becomes Y? Or perhaps beginning with G, where G becomes Z, and H becomes Y?” They set about trying this approach, but these attempts, too, rendered gibberish, as did working from the end of the code word ‘goldfinch.’
“Elizabeth, if you continue to worry at your lip in that manner, you shall render it raw!” Darcy exclaimed as he watched her chew first at the centre, then at the sides, and then upon the top lip.
“I was wondering...” she began. “No, it could not be, for it is a silly notion.”
“Tell us what you think, Lizzy,” Darcy encouraged.
“Please, Miss Elizabeth,” Richard concurred. “Do not denigrate your intelligence, for you have a remarkable mind and have helped us greatly thus far.”
“I was merely wondering why there is an entire word for the code machine if the offset is only by a single factor. Why bother with nine whole letters, eight of which are not needed?”
Darcy’s head snapped up, and his eyes flew wide open. Richard stared at him, his mouth agape. “Could it be?” he whispered.
“There was a cypher, one that I read of many years ago,” Darcy closed his eyes, searching anew for the memory, “in which one cycled through a series of Caesars, somehow...”
“Where the first letter is offset by the first letter of the codeword, but the second is offset by the second letter of the code word.” Richard concluded, his words growing louder and more excited as he spoke.
“Of course! We learned of this as a theoretical system of encryption, but it seemed far too complicated for sending any but the briefest of messages!”
“And yet, if the need for secrecy were great enough, it would be worth the effort.”
They set right to work. Richard drew out a grid wherein he placed all of the letters running across and then down, to make finding the translation for each faster, and together they worked, one letter at a time.
NAW... it began.
“This is beginning to look like a word! Or at least, it is not nonsense,” Elizabeth exclaimed, and redoubled her concentration on the continuance of the word.
The result was tantalisingly close to something sensical.
NAWISET A LA NANCHE
“It looks almost like French,” Darcy breathed. “Which, of course, we ought to have expected. And whilst I can almost understand what the meaning is, why is it not exact?”
Elizabeth stared at Richard’s grid, then broke out into a brilliant and satisfied smile.
“Because there is no W in French!” she cried. “This is how you knew that Papa was not abetting the French. Likewise, there ought to be no W in the system of offsets. Let us try one more time.”
A new grid was constructed and filled, and the short phrase painstakingly decyphered again, one letter at a time. At last, to everybody’s shock and amazement, the phrase was revealed.
NAVIRES A LA MANCHE.
Ships on the Channel.
France was planning an invasion!